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Sheer speed in data analysis just got even faster. ’s new Exalytics In-Memory Machine X3-4 is up to 25 times faster than its predecessor, the lightening-fast X2-4. Businesses now have a new and better way to turbo-charge their data discovery and decision-making processes.

Business intelligence has always been a game of speed. Let’s say your company is using a recommendation algorithm to determine what to offer customers in an ecommerce environment or at the point of an in-person transaction. You may only have a few seconds or minutes to get that offer exactly right.

That’s why the performance improvements in Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine X3-4 are so important. They accelerate data analysis, business insight, and decision-making across an enterprise.

The Exalytics 3-4 delivers performance improvements of up to 25 times in load times and nine times in calculation times when running multiple Oracle Essbase cubes concurrently. That’s compared to the Exalytics X2-4, which itself illustrated performance gains of 10 times or more compared to generic BI systems. The Exalytics X3-4 accomplishes that big jump with state-of-the-art hardware components: 2 TB of main memory (compared to 1 TB in the X2-4), 5.4 TB of hard disk (compared to 3.6 TB in the X2-4), and, for the first time, 2.4 TB of flash memory.

In addition, Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite, Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, and much of Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management have been optimized and certified for Oracle Exalytics X3-4.

This combination of hardware-induced speed and ready-to-run software simplicity was already well suited to big data efforts and now, with the addition of a seamless tie-in to Hadoop, even more so. One of the things that make Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine different from some other in-memory systems is that it works automatically and transparently with a wide variety of databases, data marts, and data warehouses, including, but by no means limited to, the Oracle Exadata Database Machine.

“With Oracle Exalytics, you continue to use your underlying data sources. You don’t have to change any of those,” Paul Rodwick, Oracle Vice President of Product Management, told me when providing an overview of the new system.

Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine X3-4 takes simplicity-through-integration a step further: dozens of apps can run unmodified in the system. They include Oracle Hyperion Planning, Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, Oracle Indirect Spend Planning, Oracle Spend Classification, and all the Oracle BI Applications. Such plug-and-play capability shouldn’t be taken for granted. Some competing in-memory systems actually require customers to recode apps, a time-consuming process that applies the brakes when speed and agility are the goal.

Speed Of Thought

At Oracle, we use the term “speed of thought” to describe BI in its purest, albeit most difficult to attain, form. That’s when your analytics infrastructure is so responsive that it delivers results as fast as you seek them. Keep in mind that business queries don’t happen one at a time in linear fashion; they come fast and furious from hundreds of knowledge workers and decision makers, and the answer to one question often leads to another in the blink of an eye. Mobile computing has a multiplier effect because more users can now ping the system anytime, anyplace.

Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine is delivering on that ambitious vision for organizations such as Pinellas County, Florida. “We’ve improved the precision and speed of our budgeting and reporting,” said Gautham Sampath, the Chief Technologist of Pinellas County, which replaced 32 servers with two Exalytics systems running Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.

One other important point: Exalytics X3-4’s performance acceleration and scalability are ideal for large mobile deployments, and mobile users can take full advantage of the system’s enhanced interactivity and visualization capabilities.

There’s actually much more packed into the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine X3-4. For all of the technical specs, check out this data sheet, and for a complete overview, see this white paper.

The capabilities for speed-of-thought analysis are now here. Does your company have a strategy for seizing the opportunity? Leave a comment here or let’s pick up the discussion on Twitter, where you can find me at @jfoley09.